Getting the most out of team-level strategy
4 min read
We’ve had a wonderful month, rich with client interaction, supporting teams to build strategies that will help them progress more effectively towards organisational goals.
As we reflected on the work we delivered, we finished with a strong feeling that this team will readily embed the changes required to achieve big things over the next 12-18 months. And in reflecting, we were trying to work out what are the features they embody, which enable that strategic performance?
Over many years of delivering strategic coaching and support to teams to develop their own strategies, this feeling has been rare. Strategy can often feel like it is completed as a check-box activity, and therefore doomed to sit in a drawer to gather dust – speaking to the abundant and compelling research that tells us ~70% of change initiatives fail.
Strategy doesn’t need to feel like this though – when executed at the right time and with the right people, strategic design can be a rewarding and highly effective activity.
Aligning strategy at the team level can have variable success
The importance of strategy being aligned and cascaded throughout an organisation is a well-trodden concept, but what does good strategy look like at the team level? Our experience has been that teams embarking on a strategic design process typically sit in one of three camps:
1. Complying with a strategic process: Traditional approaches to strategy implementation result in many organisations adopting a regular annual strategic process that creates a bottom-up to-do list for each team and function for the ensuing 12 months. This can be an appropriate approach if the activities identified help the organisation transition and evolve over the long term. But all too often, strategic decisions are pushed down from the top and translated poorly at the middle management level. This results in loose connection, prioritisation of business as usual, and often, poor measurement, due to the lack of deeper strategic understanding. Furthermore, corporate leaders tend to find strategic planning processes are a waste of time, robbing the organisation of essential energy.
2. Understanding their context and setting goals: When a new leader starts, market, consumer or competition dynamics are shifting, or there is an emerging threat, teams will often see a need to have a ‘strategy’ in place. The focus in developing the strategy is on gaining a better understanding of the context in which the team or organisation is operating, the challenges they face and identifying some high-level goals. This often results in very strong organisation-wide understanding of the operating context, but no capability or capacity for how to develop and achieve strategic priorities. The process usually enables the team or function to quickly reach a new level of understanding regarding their top priority areas, but delivery of a cohesive set of strategic priorities is unlikely.
3. Demanding strategic clarity and committing to delivery: This approach is less common. It joins both top-down, and bottom-up approaches. Executives provide the strategic pillars and boundaries that teams work within, while teams commit resources and time to deeply understanding their strategic context to really clarify what to focus on and deliver in the near, medium and longer term. Teams are supported to reallocate resources where needed and everyone in the organisation understands the different ways that strategy needs to be experienced and delivered across all levels of the organisation. The experience as an external consultant is very positive – people really want you there, they appreciate the insight you share and show an enthusiasm for growth and change.
We have found that teams in the first two categories do not have the right conditions to enable truly effective strategic delivery, while those in the third category get abundantly more out of a strategic design process. When the conditions are right, these teams can see themselves in the organisation strategy, are more purpose-driven and committed to achieving the organisation’s vision.
Teams need to be ready to embark on strategy, if they want to deliver it
Many would say that the right time to engage in strategy is yesterday, and as strategy advocates ourselves, we would absolutely agree. There is always benefit in going through the process of considering and deeply understanding your context, successes, challenges and next steps – if not for any other reason than to create a to-do list for a given time period.
However, for truly effective and enduring strategic performance to follow, we have noticed fundamental features that prepare a team to build a clear and, more importantly, implementable, strategy.
These include:
Clarity of their deeper purpose and values – understanding why the organisation exists, and how they as individuals contribute to enabling achievement of that why
A strong baseline for how they work together – clarity of roles and responsibilities, psychological safety, an agreed way of making decisions, with no back-channelling, and alignment on ways of working
Consistent and clear approaches to operations – including how those operations, systems and processes support everyday activities
A leadership mindset founded in self-efficacy – with supportive management who encourage autonomous decision-making, innovation and safety to fail; and
Capabilities that are aligned with the organisation’s purpose and outcomes – this includes ready-access and leadership commitment to quality training and development aligned with an individual’s personal and professional pathways
Most importantly, a team needs a strong and decisive leader, ideally the most senior one, who’s open and vulnerable, committed to setting ambitious goals, and who cares for their team and listens to the solutions that already reside in the room.
Having the fundamentals of a high performing team in place will be the primary enabler to achieving strategic performance in your organisation. With the right leader, these can be developed and nurtured as a precursor to the strategic design process, but don’t make the mistake of trying to resolve them as part of the process.
If you would like to discuss where your team is at, and how to achieve enhanced strategic performance get in touch today!
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